Chinese Airlines In My 1:400 Scale Model Aircraft Collection
Since December 2014 I have had a new collection area in my 1:400 collection and for the first time it consists of modern aircraft. So why make this change you ask? Here are some reasons:
- China is the place to be in aviation at present. It has grown from a handful of aircraft in the 80s to the second largest market in the world. There are 160 cities with over a million inhabitants and provinces with populations the size of Canada, Spain, Turkey, France etc. So with increasing wealth there's going to be lots of new aircraft and airlines.
- Though it's not fully deregulated its an exciting dynamic market with a wide range of airlines operating lots of different service models and in an interesting regulatory environment.
- Chinese airlines can be conservative, which means there are still some cheatlines about, but they also embrace the capability of modern tech to make truly wonderful new special schemes.
- There are lots of Chinese buyers meaning there are lots of Chinese releases so unlike other developing markets there is an impressive variety of models available and typically from the higher mould quality manufacturers (Aeroclassics and Phoenix).
My Chinese fleet has grown from a handful of models to nearly one hundred in about 10 months. Below are some shots detailing its growth (click on the images to see them full size). The first four cover from December 2014 until May 2015. As you can see within this time the initial 4 shelves expanded into 5. At this point they were organised as follows:
- Shelf 1: Air China & CAAC
- Shelf 2: China Eastern & Shanghai Airlines
- Shelf 3: China Southern & China Xinjiang
- Shelf 4: Hainan Airlines Group, Sichuan Airlines and Xiamen Airlines
- Shelf 5: Other Chinese airlines including China Southwest, China Northern and China Northwest
By July a sixth shelf had been added and following my return from a trip to England and the arrival of multiple boxes of new models from Waffle Collectibles recently I have 'had' to add a seventh shelf. The below photos cover July-October 2015.
There has been a corresponding reorganisation of the shelving as follows:
- Shelf 1: Air China & CAAC
- Shelf 2: The smaller CAAC offspring (China Southwest, Northwest, Xinjiang & China United) plus newest China Eastern
- Shelf 3: China Eastern
- Shelf 4: China Southern
- Shelf 5: Xiamen Airlines, Shanghai Airlines & Sichuan Airlines
- Shelf 6: Startups and Cargo
- Shelf 7: Hainan Airlines group carriers